


Don't read this the wrong way

by vrepitsals



Series: They call Lance the Taylor [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Getting Together, Happy Ending, Love Letters, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25505497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrepitsals/pseuds/vrepitsals
Summary: There's a love note in Lance's locker.Lance looks down at the crisp folds of its envelope and sees the kind of love he already holds in his hands from his family. The kind of love he one day hopes to share with someone special.However, it's fairly clear that this particular love isn't meant for him, because the note is addressed to a kid named Taylor.Companion fic toAnother chance to get it write, from Lance's perspective
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: They call Lance the Taylor [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1087704
Comments: 19
Kudos: 192





	1. Before Taylor

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Another chance to get it write](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16715473) by [vrepitsals](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrepitsals/pseuds/vrepitsals). 



> It's only taken me almost two years to get around to writing Lance's perspective for [Another chance to get it write](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16715473/chapters/39204085) after I said it'd take a couple of weeks
> 
> I put a big focus on writing this so it would be enjoyable either on its own or as a companion fic, so there is no pre-reading required, and they can be read in any order :D
> 
> Chapter two will be posted in about a week. If you just can't wait, you can also read ahead from Keith's perspective... there will be some fun additions for this fic as well :)
> 
> Also a super quick, self-indulgent shoutout to anyone who has ever commented on one of my fics. I'm rubbish about replying to them all, but please know that I appreciate all of them so much, and have read them all multiple times <3\. You are all great and amazing.

There's a love note in Lance's locker.

Or, at least there's a note. But really, what other reason is there for pen and paper these days? Who would pass over the security and practicality of texting, if not in pursuit of romantic sentiment?

If sentiment is what the author was going for, then they've achieved it in spades. The recipient's name is spelled out in printed letters, the neatness of the script appearing to be born out of sheer determination and multiple attempts rather than any innate skill.

The envelope itself is made of the same generic notebook paper that most students have, and Lance assumes that the note would be made from the same. But far from detract anything from the message, it serves to ground it in reality.

If this note was printed on expensive paper or with calligraphy ink it would be too removed from the real world, like stepping onto a movie set or into a prank show. But this, using the materials on hand because you can't help but express love wherever you are, whatever you have plucks at Lance's heart strings and transports him back to a time and place he longs for on the bad days.

Lance looks down at the envelope, but he sees the little notes his father pens on their shopping list whenever he has to leave for work before his mother is awake, always signed with a heart and a wish for her happiness. Lance sees the mixtape his sister tucked into his bag when he left for the Garrison, so that he'd never be without the sounds of home, even in a new place and a different language.

He sees the pictures his nieces and nephews send him with all his family's letters, sketched on the back of junk mail and unimportant documents (or occasionally important ones that he has to scan and email back home so his bother has a copy). He sees his family's letters and emails, always diligent in recounting any news so that he's not out of the loop and always containing over the top declarations of how proud they are.

Lance looks at the letter and sees the kind of love he already holds in his hands from his family. The kind of love he one day hopes to share with someone special.

However, it's fairly clear that this particular love isn't meant for him, because the note is addressed to a kid named Taylor.

It might have some difficulty reaching its destination, given that it's in Lance's locker.

Lance knows that it's pointless, but he can't help glancing around the hall, just in case there's anyone watching in horror as he receives a letter meant for someone else. Be everyone else is engrossed in their own lockers, and if Lance lingers much longer he knows he'll be late for class.

He considers his options, but he doesn't really have any. He doesn't know who wrote the note, and he's not about to open it and invade the sender's privacy just to find out. The fact that it's in his locker with zero context points to a 'secret admirer' type scenario anyway.

No, the only option he really has is to note that the sender has the wrong locker, and leave it somewhere in the hopes that they'll find it.

He grabs the closest pen and scrawls _return to sender_ in the top left corner. He feels slightly guilty about destroying the envelope, but the folds are crisp and clearly well-practised. It would be more of a shame for the mysterious sender to lose the note entirely than to need to make a new envelope.

Right then the bell rings, which means he really will be late for class. He positions the letter so that it's slightly poking out through the crack between his locker and its door, barely visible except for those looking for it.

Then he runs, hoping he can avoid Professor Montgomery's wrath.

* * *

"Morning, Mullet,"

"Hey," Keith says, and it's not much, but he does stop eating breakfast to look up at where Lance is leaning up against his table, which is still enough to shoot a jolt of adrenaline through Lance's veins. It's still more than what Keith gives anyone else.

"So, we have the simulator today…"

Lance smirks down at Keith and ignores the pleased flutter in his chest as Keith continues to give him his full attention. Keith may be the victor in most (all) of the bets they make, but before the terms are even decided Lance has always already won.

"Yeah. What group are you in?" Keith asks.

He never gets directly to the point in these conversations, skirting around the reason he must know Lance has approached him. Lance hasn't really figured out why just yet.

"Group B, as in 'Better than group D'" Lance leans over further and sees Keith break out into a grin.

This is also a staple of these conversations. Keith will nearly always ask Lance what group he's in, or who his Engineer is. Lance would be lying if he said he didn't pre-prepare come backs based on it.

Lance never has to ask, because Lance always scours the list for Keith's name immediately after finding his own. Honestly, Keith could probably get away with not even bothering to check the board, because Lance does it for him anyway.

But it's clear that this, just like most other aspects of their relationship, is unrequited.

"Oh yeah?" Keith raises an eyebrow and looks way more put together sitting over a half-finished bowl of cereal than Lance ever thinks he's looked in his life. "You sure about that?"

"Them's fighting words, Keith."

Keith leans minutely forward, and Lance has to fight the urge to do the same. He can barely handle being this close to Keith, any closer would surely undermine his composure entirely.

Any closer and Lance would surely let slip all of his feelings about Keith, about their rivalry, about all the things Lance uses this as a front to hide behind. Or, far more mortifying-ly, Lance could let slip the fact that he secretly thinks that the monstrosity that Keith calls a hairstyle actually suits him.

"What are you gonna do about it?"

Lance wants to lean in, wants to take Keith's bait, wants to follow his siren's song. But he's done this too many times and he knows better.

Instead he leans back, and uses his height advantage to try and look intimidating.

"The usual terms then?"

Keith rolls his eyes, but he's still smiling.

"Iverson doesn't give me secret extra-credit questions, I don't know how many times I have to tell you-"

"C'mon Keith," Lance interrupts, and silently curses himself for using Keith's name so many times in such a short conversation, "Jaqueline told me that Greg told her that you have last year's practice test for the biology midterm."

Keith sighs.

"Iverson didn't give it to me… but yeah. Sure," he says, "if I win I want a copy of your physics notes."

Lance is pretty sure that Keith must have a copy of most, if not all of Lance's beautifully and painstakingly constructed notes by now, but he always seems to know exactly which ones he needs to complete his collection.

Lance has, more than once, had to re-write pages of them before photocopying them for Keith because of incriminating doodles in their margins.

"Excellent," Lance says, stretching his arms above his head nonchalantly and trying to ignore the fact that he can still feel Keith's eyes on him, "well I'll see you at dinner tomorrow to collect my prize."

"Honestly if you want it you can just-"

"Good luck today, Mullet," Lance says, cutting Keith off to avoid his pity, "you're gonna need it."

"Yeah, you too." Keith says. And then, when Lance has already turned to walk away. "Hey."

Lance turns back around. He can't help it.

"Have you finished this week's physics homework?"

"No way," Lance says, leaning back over Keith's table and eating up Keith's continued attention, "I'm not falling for you trying to pick my brains."

Keith rolls his eyes again, but something escapes his throat that almost sounds like a chuckle.

"Keep telling yourself that."

"The truth? Don't worry, I will."

Lance walks away, focusing on keeping his posture straight and his pace steady as he heads back to his table. Internally though, he's all but skipping.

Once he sits down it takes all of Lance's composure not to bury his head in his hands and scream. Instead, he settles for making a face at his bowl.

"It's not embarrassing to have feelings, Lance," Hunk says, looking up from the notes he'd been reading over while Lance was gone.

"It is when they're painfully one-sided."

Lance picks up his spoon and goes about finishing his breakfast.

Hunk looks over Lance's shoulder, back the way he came, and makes a non-committal hum.

* * *

The note is back.

It's sitting in his locker, more rumpled than ever, blue ink crossing out the comment he made in red.

Lance might find the romance in the everyday, in spelling out love in what you have rather than saving your feelings up for a big gesture. Lance was fully on the sender's side when it came to the notebook paper, the blue ballpoint pen.

But this is just sloppy.

He pulls out his red pen again, because it's probably a good idea to keep the colour consistent to let the writer know it's him again, and if the universe has chosen Lance to be the love mentor for this hopeless case then so be it - for once he'll be the bringer of bad news rather than the receiver.

_You didn't even make a new envelope? D:_

There. Short and to the point. Exactly what Professor Iverson's rants never are, despite the fact that they're usually outlining how his student's need to be in their essays. Not that Lance is bitter or anything.

His work done, Lance shuts the letter in the door of his locker, not worrying as much about keeping creases from the paper. He honestly doesn't think he could make it much worse than it already is.

Once it's secure, Lance gives it a sharp look before he continues on with his day.

 _You can do better,_ Lance thinks, knowing his advice is pointless, but almost wishing the letter writer might heed it nonetheless. _I've put my hopes in your success, don't make me regret it._

* * *

Well.

At least they made a new envelope.

That's about all Lance can say in praise of this second attempt. If he were in class right now and being forced to give a feedback sandwich, that would probably be the first piece of positive feedback he'd give, to try and soften the blow of the negative that they all know is coming. The negative feedback that's the only honest part of the whole exercise.

The negative feedback: if you leave a note in your crush's locker, and someone else responds… you have the wrong locker. Maybe try a different one?

The third bit of feedback, the positive to round out the sandwich, Lance would probably have to come up with on the fly. It'd be something almost meaningless, as it always is.

Maybe kudos for the persistence? Perhaps something about slow progress being better than none? Although that really sounds like meaningless drivel, even to Lance's own ears. Probably means Professor Montgomery would think it was profound though.

But the one good thing about all this is that Lance isn't in class, so he doesn't have to structure his thoughts into food shapes because his teachers think it makes them more palatable.

He looks down at the envelope once more as he tries to think of what to say.

The edges of the envelope are even more crisp than they were the first time around. It's almost as if the letter writer heaped all of their hopes of success in the execution of the folds, and in the process completely overlooked the notion of the letter's destination.

Lance can't quash down his smile at the thought.

Is he completely gone if he admits that this sender's obvious complete lack of skill just makes the effort that much sweeter?

Besides, he'd tried to goad Keith into an argument at lunch today just to get in his field of vision for a moment. He'd almost combusted on the spot when Keith had smiled at him. So he's no stranger to the overwhelming hope for something more to happen, and having zero idea how to actually go about it.

Lance rolls his eyes, partly at the letter writer, partly at himself, but decides to be kinder in his feedback than he might otherwise be.

_You know they number the locker numbers here, right? Some more recon might be in order._

He closes the note in the door of his locker and traces a finger down its spine before he goes to find Hunk.

* * *

Lance would usually hang around the common room once classes are done, or study in the library with Hunk if there's an upcoming test, or bother Keith in the hallways if his self-esteem is feeling high enough to not remind him every five seconds how little he means to the other boy.

But it's Thursday, and Thursday night is the best night of the week - not only because it means there's only one day left of having new information shovelled onto him at an alarming rate before he has the weekend to try and process any of it - but because Thursday night is family Zoom night.

Thursday night is when Lance puts aside his books and snuggles under his doona with his laptop perched on his lap and his headphones on, to get an approximation of the house he grew up in, the one place that feels like home.

On Thursday nights Lance gets to see Luis imitating what Veronica says behind her back (a habit that Lance picked up from him and Nadia picked up from Lance). He gets to watch as Marco tries to explain to their father how to get the sound properly wired up solely through hand gestures, or hear Marco try to explain to their father how to get the video connected as Luis and Rachel laugh in the background.

On Thursday nights Lance is able to talk in rapid-fire Spanish, the only language that can keep up with the pace of his thoughts, and have his family understand every word because they've known him long enough that even the Garrison's overloaded wifi can't hold back their connection.

On the bad nights Lance longs for the beach and the sun and his mother's cooking, but on Thursday night he knows that he still has the important parts of home.

This Thursday night is no exception. He revels in his family's presence as he always does, and when they ask him how the Garrison is, he knows that the story he has to tell them is pure gold.

"Wait, hold on," Rachel stops him half way through, "this is made up. You're making this up."

"I'm not!" Lance exclaims, crossing his arms. "I'm a victim of reverse identity theft! I've managed to pick up someone else's secret admirer!"

Does Rachel really think that his life is boring enough that he would have to stoop to fiction to entertain them? Lance had at least three other stories that were contenders for this Thursday night update, but they'd all been blown away but the mystery of this misdirected mail.

She sits back and frowns in thought, the way she always used to whenever Lance managed to get a question in trivial pursuit that she missed.

"Why would they keep sending you letters if they know it's going to the wrong place?" Marco asks, probably trying to jump in before Rachel can snap back something that will turn this into an argument. Lance can still hear her grumble something in the background, but ignores it.

"Beats me," Lance says.

Lance has pondered the matter extensively: during boring lectures, in the lunch line, late at night when he can't sleep. He and Hunk have brainstormed possible explanations, but neither of them had thought of anything plausible.

If Hunk can't figure out this mystery, then Lance is about ready to resignedly call it a glitch in the matrix and move on with his day.

"Isn't it obvious?" Luis asks, to the silence of everyone, because it really isn't. "Either Lance is lying, or he's the unwitting protagonist of a romantic comedy."

"I'm not lying," Lance mumbles, and then louder when his mother tells him to speak up, "and I'm training to be a space pilot. If my life is anything then it's a sci-fi."

Rachel and Luis share a look before he shrugs, looking smug.

"Who says it can't be both?"

* * *

Lance was expecting radio silence after his third rebuff. In a way, it's nice to have something taken off his plate, small as it is. All of his professors have been describing their upcoming exams with brutal grins, some sort of institution-celebrated hazing of fourteen year olds. Far from a growth mindset, the Garrison very much promotes a 'bury you alive and see if you can claw your way out of the dirt' approach to learning.

Still, as little time as Lance has for anything even approaching fun, he's still a little disappointed to lose his front-row seat to the misadventures of his secret admirer. 'His' in the sense of shared comradery of course, not that he thinks of the sender or the notes as his in any way. That'd be crazy. Lance isn't crazy.

Moving right along…

Lance has had the first act of a rom com (not his, thanks Luis) playing out in his locker, and color him a sap, but he kind of wants to see how it ends.

Does blue ballpoint pen on notebook paper manage to melt the heart of the unknown Taylor? Does this story have a happy ending?

Who knows? Hopefully future Lance.

But it's probably the case that this knowledge isn't in his cards. Or so Lance thinks, before attempt number four, letter number three ends up on the floor of the room he shares with Hunk, obviously slid under his door.

He pauses in his single-minded march to his bed to stare at it, lying innocently on the threadbare carpet that was clearly laid thirty years ago and was probably last cleaned around then too.

Blue biro labels Lance's floor for a roommate he doesn't have. And as he picks up the letter, he's half tempted to not even bother giving it back - because what hope on Earth can his secret admirer possibly have, given they've managed to screw up every delivery so absolutely thoroughly?

Lance does eventually return the letter to his locker with a note indicating the continuation of the sender's mistake, but not before taking a video message of himself holding it to send home.

"PROOF!" He shouts at a camera representing his sister.

 _So you know how to fold an envelope?_ She sends back over text.

_You think I have the free time to do something like this?_

_Yeah, you're probably right. So you've got a really clueless secret admirer then? Let me know when the wedding is._

Lance responds with a reasonably rude gif and Rachel responds in kind. From there the conversation naturally devolves into memes and petty insults, and Lance ignores the lingering, pleased embarrassment that settles inside him at Rachel's words.

He doesn't bother trying to deny that he's pictured an alternate universe where the letters in his locker had his name on the front. A universe where he spends lunch time staring across the cafeteria with Hunk, discussing the letters' contents and guessing at their sender.

He probably would try to deny that he's pictured more than one, and that even though most of these alternate universes involve a different convoluted plot for discovering the true sender of the letters, that question always has the same answer.

He certainly would deny that the alternate universe he pictures the most, his secret favorite, is the one where clear as day at the bottom of the first letter was Keith's name.

* * *

Lance is going to be late for Thursday night Zoom night.

He'd gotten caught up in the student lounge. Normally, nothing could distract Lance from getting back to his room on Thursdays. But James Griffin was being as asshole to Doug, a communications officer who is a couple of years younger than the other first years and so small that his parents bought him a roller bag instead of a backpack because he can't physically lift all of the books he brings with him everywhere.

Doug is perhaps the meekest person Lance has ever met, but he's also one of the kindest. The kind of person who'll push everyone else's chairs in after class to make things easier for the next group to come through. Doug doesn't deserve Griffin's boredom or his wrath.

But it'd taken a while to irritate Griffin into leaving them alone and then to make sure Doug was okay and walk him back to his room. Longer than Lance had.

Lance knows his family would understand, but he also knows that the twins have a bed time and Lance will eventually have to go to dinner. Lance will be dammed before he lets James Griffin of all people reduce the amount of time he has with his family by even one second.

So when Lance unlocks his door and opens it it's with a flourish, not even bothering to look around as he sprints towards his bed.

And almost falls flat on his face when he trips over something on his floor.

Lance looks down.

His and Hunk's dorm room is not quite spotless, but it's usually very clear that they both came from homes where there was a certain standard of tidiness that was always upheld.

But right now that cleanliness is marred by a familiar looking envelope with blue ink on the front.

Lance picks it up more on a reflex more than anything else, before he spies his laptop on his bed and remembers that he's wasting valuable time. Family Zoom night outranks the mysterious letter writer. Family Zoom night outranks anything.

Lance leaves the letter on his bedside table while he, finally, is able to see his family's faces. While he basks in their presence and grounds himself because this is what matters, not grades, not numbers on the page that claim to define his worth.

Lance is feeling a lot more centered as he looks back over at the letter. Where before he might have been tempted to go for bluntness, for multiple question marks and exclamation points to highlight his confusion at the sender's continued mistake, now he leans toward a friendly reminder. Something that will hopefully tell the writer that as much as Lance is confused, he's also rooting for them.

_They also number the rooms, buddy. Right in the middle of the door._

Lance continues to look down at the letter. He really should head to dinner, or else he's going to hit the peak time and get caught in a long line.

But he can't help but think that one of the students at dinner is this mysterious letter writer. One of Lance's fellow students has sent four love letters to the same wrong address.

Lance doesn't even know the full extent of it. There could be more letters, possibly dozens more that went in other wrong directions, or maybe even into Taylor's waiting hands.

How many times has the mysterious writer failed? Have they ever succeeded?

Lance wants to know. He wishes that knowledge could be in his cards to know, if not now, then someday. He wants to know how the letter writer could possibly find the strength of will to continue after so many setbacks.

Lance doesn't think he could keep trying, if he failed as many times as the letter writer.

But then again, how many times has Lance even tried?

How many times has Lance stepped out on a limb, and done something for Keith that can't be explained away by their rivalry?

If there's one thing Lance knows about the letter writer, it's the same thing that Lance knows about Keith. The fact that they go after what they want, and they don't stop until they've achieved it.

How can Lance call the letter writer his comrade in love - how can Lance ever hope to be on Keith's level, if he isn't willing to do the same?

Lance isn't generally lucky. He's never won a lucky door prize in his life, despite entering the one at his local fair every year and seeing Rachel walk home with prizes more than once.

The universe doesn't just give Lance what he wants. So why would he expect love to find its own way into his locker, wrapped in crisp folds?

Perhaps, if he really tried, if he was bold like Keith and thoughtful like the letter writer, he wouldn't need to ponder on alternate universes where Keith feels the same. Instead, maybe he could live in one.

Maybe the best universe is the one where Lance makes his own luck.

* * *

Lance gets up early on Valentine's day. He gets up before Hunk, which is basically unheard of, even though Hunk already has his timing perfectly calibrated to maximise his sleep-in while still making sure he always gets to class on time. Lance normally gets up fifteen minutes later than that, always cursing himself out for it as he tries to brush his teeth and put on his socks and find the notebooks he needs all at the same time.

But today Lance is on a mission.

His desk is clean for once, save for a stack of blank notepaper and a pen. He hadn't managed to get any words onto the page last night, or any of the nights before that, but he has cleared himself a space, which has to count for something.

But this morning is his last chance, and he's going to get some words down.

Good words.

Words that will sweep Keith off his feet. Words that he can't possibly say no to.

Lance has had more than a month to imagine the words that are contained in the envelopes to Taylor, after all. He's considered them backwards and forwards.

He's visualised their creation, their author hunched over their notebook: perhaps with frenzied hands trying to capture the endless stream of their affection on the page before it overflows and is lost; or perhaps with careful pen strokes, considering each sentence the way that an engineer designs a space station, striving for perfection, with no margin for error. He's pondered Taylor reading them, ripping them open as soon as they receive them, curiosity impossible to abate, or else saving them in their bag all day, opening them only under the covers of their bed, in their own little world where nothing exists save the connection brought about by words, the give and take of romance.

Lance has spent so many hours wondering, he must be at least something of an expert in this kind of thing by now. He thinks of the author, thinks of his unknown ally in love, and lays his pen on the page, trying to use the thought as a conduit, to get his own stream of feelings into words.

He tries to get out the words he hides behind bravado to Keith's face, tries to rip the rivalry out of his paragraphs, tries to write something that would make his note-writer proud.

He tries.

But his sentences refuse to flow. Instead of floating on top of the stream of his affection for Keith, instead of following the currents and mapping out his feelings for the other boy, they sink to the bottom. They get caught between cracks in the riverbed and stagnate and drown.

When Hunk wakes up Lance has thirty drafts lying around him, and none of them are enough.

Some are full of meaningless cliches. Others look better from an outside perspective, but none of them feel like they written by him. None of them feel like they were written for Keith.

They're too impersonal, they could have been written for the unknowable Taylor for all their vagueness. They could have been written for anyone, and that's not good enough.

His feelings for Keith are intrinsically tied to their rivalry, to the victory of getting a chuckle out of Keith at the breakfast table, to the jealousy and longing every time Keith beats him in the simulator and to the thought that deep down, if they were somehow able to work together they'd be unstoppable, like they were hewn from the same elemental rage. In trying to separate them out, to tease his feelings from all that complexity to make them palatable, he'd removed all their flavour.

His feelings for Keith will always be tightly bound with everything else. That's what makes them his. That's what makes them Keith's.

So while Hunk finishes getting ready, Lance ignores the need for perfection, and instead calls for honesty. Keith isn't just a one-dimensional love-interest in a romance, and Lance isn't just the hopeless admirer.

They're both more than that. And if Keith understands their connection, if Keith notices the way that Lance can't help but smile at him, then he will understand Lance's words in all their layers. He will put the words in their context. 

The final draft is still imperfect, perhaps it's too rough around the edges, perhaps it assumes too much intimacy, too much ability to read through the lines on Keith's part.

But Lance has already run out of time to drop it in Keith's locker before classes start, and if he lingers any longer he'll miss breakfast entirely, so it’s all he's got.

_Dear Keith,_

_You must think you're pretty perfect, mustn't you? Best in the class, softest-looking hair in the grade. You have everyone's attention, Iverson's approval. You're the standard that everyone else is held to - and how could any of us ever measure up?_

_But I know you're not perfect. I know you're flesh and blood. I know you get angry more quickly than you should. I know you don't get close to people - although I don’t know why. Maybe you just think you're better than us mere mortals?_

_Sometimes I feel like the only person who can see past the shiny exterior. Who can do more than worship the ground you walk on. Who can get past that, to want to walk beside you._

_Everyone else is too caught up in projecting the things they think you are onto you. They think you're perfect. I know you're not._

_They want you to be the all-knowing, golden boy of the Galaxy Garrison. They want to rip out your fire and replace it with a bottomless well of patience and kindness. Can you even imagine?_

_I just want Keith. I just want to take you out._

_Come find me when you know what you want._

_-Lance_

Lance runs out of the room with the letter held as gingerly in his hands as it can be given his rush.

It's barely even a letter, it doesn’t have crisp, folded envelopes like those sent by Taylor's admirer. Perhaps it's more of a note than a letter, but it has to be enough.

The note, like the messages his father leaves for his mother on shopping lists, like his sister's mixtape, like blue ballpoint pen on lined paper, is borne of reality rather than romanticism. He didn't spend hours and hundred of dollars on the materials, but he can't help but think that shouldn't matter.

Keith seems to be used to being the best, but he doesn't seem used to the best things. Lance is pretty sure that Keith is just about the antonym of pretentious. But as he finishes his breakfast, as he sees Keith hurry in far later than he should be if he wants to make it to class on time, he can't dampen his anxiety entirely.

Lance has never felt like enough for Keith, and this note just seems to expound those feelings. If Keith did Valentine's day, Lance is sure that he would have planned something better, spent weeks on the perfect card and gift. Or maybe he would have written something perfect on his first draft, making the receiver fall over their feet while barely trying.

Lance continues to ponder what a Valentine's gift from Keith might look like, but as soon as he walks into his first class he realises that he doesn't have to wonder what a Valentine's gift from his letter writer would be.

Because there, sitting on his desk, is a red, heart-shaped box of chocolates sitting under an envelope made of notebook paper.

He's not the first one in the room, and he can feel the gaze of his classmates on him as he pulls out his chair. James Griffin wolf-whistles from across the room (trust this to be the one day that asshole is early) and Lance doesn't want to think about how red his cheeks must be.

Instead he picks up both the box of chocolates and the note addressed to Taylor and places them in his bag. Then he pulls out his notebook and pens and resolutely stares down at his desk.

He can hear a few of the other students still muttering, but he doesn't move.

If he doesn't react then hopefully, eventually, this spectacle will become boring.

Lance isn't sure how long he sits there. It feels like at least a decade, but given how close he was cutting it it's probably is no more than five minutes.

He doesn't look up until he hears Iverson start the lesson, and even then he simply shifts his rigid gaze from his desk to the board, not risking looking around at the reactions of his classmates, not even to double check if there's someone recoiling in horror at finally, on failure number five, realising their mistake.

After class he stands at his locker with the note and gift and ponders what to do. He only really has one method for returning these notes, wedging them between the door of his locker, and he doesn't think that'd work too well for packages.

Eventually, he shrugs and places the chocolates in his bag. There's not much he can do about it, and honestly, giving someone a box of Valentine's day chocolates that you accidentally already gave to someone else is tacky as heck.

If the letter writer even tried then Lance, their mentor in love, would be disappointed. So really he's just removing the temptation. Someone may as well enjoy the chocolates, and given how much unnecessary confusion this whole situation has given Lance, that someone may as well be him.

He takes out the envelope and ponders a moment what to write. He figures that he and the letter writer have had enough one-sided interactions that he can move more into friendly territory.

_Seriously dude, again? Clearly fifth time is not the charm. I hope you know I'm keeping the chocolates ;)_

Lance places the letter gently against the door of his locker as he closes it.

It isn't until later, when he's safely in his room and far too far away to change anything, that he realised that his comment basically assumed that the letter writer was a guy, even though there's no evidence for that fact.

Taylor is a unisex name, after all. And the gender of Taylor wouldn't tell Lance anything about the gender of their admirer anyway. But something about the camaraderie between then, about them being comrades in arms made Lance assume when he shouldn't have.

Or perhaps it's the fact that whenever he imagines someone writing love letters, in his mind's eye that someone will always eventually morph into Keith.

Lance leans back against his wall and decides that it doesn't matter. The word 'dude' is close enough to unisex at this point that he hopefully won't have caused any offense. Besides, if they're counting mistakes than the letter writer is certainly still in the lead.

With a smile, Lance lets the thought go. It doesn't really matter anyway.

Twenty minutes later Lance drops his pen midway through a sentence as he realizes the potential implications of adding a winking face at the end of the note.

He puts his head in his hands and lets out an embarrassed groan. It's a bit harder to focus on study after that.

* * *

It should have been a normal, boring Tuesday.

Wake up slightly too late to do his morning routine in anything but a rush. Breakfast. Drop by his locker. Class. Lunch. Drop by his locker to pick up the books for his afternoon classes. Class. Study in the library with Hunk. Convince Hunk to goof off for a while. More study. Head back to their room. Shower. Lights out. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.

His schedule has seen a couple of changes in recent weeks. One had been the subtraction of any time spent bothering Keith, since he's all but turned into a ghost. Lance has trouble spotting him in the halls now, let alone tracking him down for a conversation.

He's managed it once or twice, while Keith was eating lunch. But instead of the usual exasperated but at least a little bit fond smile Keith normally gives him, Keith had completely shut down and all but bolted as soon as he could. Before Lance could even get through the taunts about their upcoming simulations he'd spent all day coming up with in a futile attempt to put Lance's confession behind them.

Lance hadn't expected much of his Valentine's day note outside of the hopeful but frankly unrealistic corners of his mind, but he'd hoped that at worst Keith would just ignore it. He'd hoped that at worst their relationship could have just continued in the way that it was, with the knowledge that Keith was completely out of Lance's league firmly cemented in Lance's mind.

Keith seems to have explosive reactions, and since he hadn't approached Lance on Valentine's day with a reaction, Lance had hoped that it meant he might have been spared one entirely. But apparently Keith can change the game whenever it comes to making Lance feel like he's not good enough **.**

Apparently Keith can switch to avoidance and dismissal if it's not what Lance is expecting. Lance tells himself it's fine. It's probably better than getting an explosive reaction anyway.

But Lance still hadn't tried to approach Keith again. He can take a hint.

The other change has been a lack of letters. But that's to be expected, after the Valentine's debacle. Hopefully the mysterious letter writer has tracked down the elusive Taylor and they've sorted it all out.

Lance hopes that they haven't just given up. He hopes that the letter writer's Valentine's day romance had a better end than Lance's. Although that seems unlikely, given that the Valentine's day letter had been pushed back through the slits of his locker when none of the others had, and had been ignored every other time Lance had left it out for pickup.

Lance guesses he'll never know one way or the other, but part of him can't help but feel some degree of kinship with the letter writer for being as unlucky in love as he is.

He puts the letter in the draw of his bedside table, and tells himself he's keeping it safe for when the letter writer inevitably needs it back, rather than as a souvenir of a fun, albeit strange part of his Garrison life that Lance is disappointed to lose.

The day is going as expected. He's pulling his inorganic chemistry textbook out of his locker after eating a slice of slightly questionable looking meatloaf, when Keith shows up, completely breaking their well-rehearsed routine.

Lance ignores the way that his heart all but skips a beat in his chest. Instead, he tries to come up with an opening line that will be memorable, that will make Keith's heart speed up for once, that will make Keith's knees weak. _Missed me?_ has some potential, but Lance thinks he can do better.

He gives Keith a glance up and down for inspiration and that's when he sees it.

In Keith's hand is the familiar sight of a piece of notebook paper folded into an envelope, with blue ink on the front.

Lance has envisioned Keith writing a love letter. He's wondered at what Keith with a crush would even look like; how he'd act. Lance had never thought he'd actually get to see it.

Keith has always been so far ahead, so out of reach. Surely he's impossible to bother with anything as fanciful as romantic attraction. Surely it would be impossible for Keith to be brought low with something as embarrassing as a high school crush.

But all this time Keith has been hiding that depth just below the surface. It was just directed at someone else. Still out of Lance's reach.

"It's you," Lance says, abandoning any quest for cleverness. There's no use in trying to play a game that Lance has clearly already lost.

"Yeah?"

Keith looks, if anything, confused. Lance isn't sure how to place his question or his expression.

Lance has imagined the mysterious letter writer approaching him at his locker. Sure, he'd never pictured it as Keith, but he'd also never envisioned that the letter writer would get this far without realising their mistake.

Lance is standing at the mysterious 'Taylor's' locker taking books out of it. How could that be any more clear?

But when Keith shifts, it's not to reel back in in horror. Instead, he places the note on top of the textbook Lance is holding and gives him a half-smile which explains less than nothing.

Lance frowns down at the note. Down at Taylor's name for daring to steal Keith's affection before Lance could even take a swing at it.

"What do you want me to do with this?" Lance asks, genuinely confused, and Keith has the audacity to laugh.

Keith pulls this kind of insane stunt and then laughs at Lance when he's confused. It's almost reminiscent of one of the dumb 'pranks' James Griffin would pull, making fun of someone for not understanding something incoherent.

"What do you think?" Keith grins at him, and as Lance sneaks another look at the letter, at someone else's name staring up at him, it's as if his blood turns cold.

What do you expect to happen when you hand someone a letter addressed to someone else?

You expect them to deliver it for you. Because normally when you do it, you're at a post office.

Keith is still smiling at him when Lance's thoughts are interrupted by the bell - and is it just Lance or does Keith's smile have a sharp edge to it where it didn't before?

Their conversation apparently over, Keith just turns and starts walking away.

As if now that their transaction is done, he's free to go about his day. As if now that he's given Lance his job, Lance deservers no further attention.

"Keith, wait!" Lance calls across the hall. It's more desperate than he wants it to be, but he still hopes that Keith will stop.

There's this fragile, desperate hope in him that Keith will have a good explanation for all of this. An explanation beyond that Keith decided a month ago that their relationship now involves Lance running errands for him whenever he wants. An explanation beyond that, after a month of using Lance as a messenger, Keith discovered Lance's feelings for him and decided that they didn't change anything.

Keith does stop, just for a moment, to turn around and throw him a wave and a sarcastic smile. A sort of 'you know what to do, run along now servant' type of thing. It would have been less offensive for Keith to just give Lance the finger in all honesty.

Lance shoves the note in his bag and closes his locker with a bang.

The entire class turns to look at him as he stumbles in right before the tardy bell, and he slinks to his seat with his head down.

Lance tries to force himself to focus on the lesson, because whenever he thinks back to Keith or the letter he can feel the anger start to burn and the tears start to prick at the corners of his eyes.

Only when he's safely back in his room does he let himself think on it. Of how much of an idiot he must have been to trust Keith, to not have seen this coming.

Doesn't he know that whatever level he manages to clamber onto, Keith is always at least a few above?

He pulls out all the letters he still has and stares at them both for a few moments. He thinks of his sentimentality at wanting to keep a letter as a nice memory. He thinks of all his daydreams about the letter writer hunched over a desk producing poetry with words, all his dreams about Keith one day feeling the same.

Then slowly and methodically he rips up the letters. Without feeling, he watches them fall to pieces on his bed as mentally he rips up his hopes and daydreams.

Then he sweeps them all into his garbage can and hopes against hope that that'll be the end of it.

* * *

Once Keith decides that he wants something, there doesn't seem to be any force that can make him stop.

Lance has tried to iterate, in every possible way that wants no part in this. He ignores Keith in class. He's stopped approaching him in the halls or at meals.

Really, given that with one noteable exception Keith has never approached Lance for an interaction that alone should have been enough.

But it seems as soon as Lance leaned back Keith leaned in.

Suddenly he's the one staring at Lance during class, he's the one boring holes into the side of Lance's head with his gaze, and Lance is the one having to pretend he doesn't feel it.

But despite their change in roles, he doesn't get any of Keith's luck. Because Keith, the bastard, seems to thrive in the worst situations.

And if Lance isn't going to give him attention, then Iverson will certainly heap enough praise on Keith's rising scores to cancel any of it out.

Lance clenches his fist around his worst test score all semester as Iverson waxes lyrical about Keith's answers, ignoring the oppressive feeling of Keith watching his defeat.

 _Stop looking at me_. Lance thinks desperately, wishing there was a way to make Keith hear. _You have the victory. You have my heart and my dignity - what more could you possibly want?_

Apparently Keith wants Lance's service too. Because there's a letter in Lance's locker for Taylor. It's clearly thicker than the others too, which somehow makes it even worse. How can the reclusive Keith suddenly have so much to say the moment Lance wants him to shut up?

Lance pulls out his red pen that he's all but grown to hate. It holds nothing but bad memories in its cheap plastic coating. Lance should probably just give it to someone else, see if they have any better luck with it.

But instead Lance uses it to write one final response. Final, because any further letters from Keith will be directed straight to the trash.

_This mail processing centre has now closed. Return to sender._

Lance is almost proud of his prose. It divulges almost none of his emotions. It gives away barely a hint of his general devastation, his complete lack of hope.

For just a moment after Lance slams his locker door with the letter sticking out of it, he feels in control.

* * *

Despite everything, Thursday night is still the best night of the week.

Because Thursday night means only one more day of Keith staring at him during class before he can hole himself up in his room and avoid him for the weekend.

But far, far more importantly, because Thursday night is still family Zoom night.

He hasn't told his family about Keith's part in the letters, although he'd probably implied enough when he couldn't fully hide his heartbroken expression the one time Rachel had brought it up.

He'd rather not have them worrying about him, and after Lance told Hunk about it he's been exceptionally patient about putting up with all of the Lance's rants about the subject.

Hunk had even offered to beat Keith up on Lance's behalf. He'd looked so serious about it, even though the only thing Hunk fears more than disappointing authority is physical confrontation, and Lance has seen first-hand how well Keith can handle himself in a fight.

"Thanks buddy," Lance had said to the offer, "but Keith's not worth it."

Hunk has developed an almost supernatural ability to be standing between Lance and Keith whenever they cross paths in the hallway, which Lance is exceedingly thankful for.

His family offer Lance a blissful time without thinking about this whole affair though, and Lance's heart is lighter than it's been all week when he waves goodbye and closes the chat window.

Luis has a new, ridiculous haircut he gave himself and Rachel kicked ass at her debating competition just like Lance knew she would.

He's smiling as he pulls out his maths textbook to finish off this week's problem questions, and turns on his _Get pumped for homework_ playlist through his headphones.

Of course, that's when there's a knock at the door.

Lance doesn't notice it until Hunk gets up to answer it. His field of sound switches to quiet as he pulls off his headphones and looks to where Hunk is now trying to block the doorway.

"Oh hey Keith," Hunk says, and Lance is pretty sure he can feel his blood pressure spike, "umm I don't think-"

Oh heck no.

Thursday night is the best night of the week and Lance is dammed if he'll let Keith ruin it.

"No no no!" He rants, moving around Hunk to face their unwanted guest head on, feeling a bit better with Hunk behind him to back him up.

"You are not welcome here!" Lance continues, poking Keith in the chest to make his point even clearer. "Vamoose! Be gone! I don't want to deal with you today!"

Keith is smiling at Lance cautiously - or whatever the equivalent Keith expression is for a regular person's cautious smile.

"Ok, I'll go," Keith says with that soft hopeful tone that people get when they know their request is ridiculous but they hope the other person will roll over and do it anyway, "just… here."

Keith pushes a letter at Lance that Lance hadn't even noticed in his laser-focussed fury, and Lance can feel literal disgust cause him to recoil at the sight. When did he develop such a strong conditioned response to such an innocent thing?

"Nope, that is precisely what we're not doing," he says, probably too loud, the words all but pushing out of him to express the revulsion curling deep in his gut as one of his hands pushes the letter and thereby Keith's hand away from him without him even thinking.

Lance crosses his arms to send a clear message to Keith, but also to try and regain some sense of control of himself. It's ridiculous that Keith can cause this sort of rise out of him when no one else can.

Keith looks almost stumped for a moment, the way that his face falls.

But it's only a split second before he acquires a new target, and his cruel smile returns. Instead of Lance he pushes the letter towards Hunk, and takes things one step further.

"Will you make sure he reads it?"

Lance may have taught himself out of swearing entirely so that he could spend time with his niece and nephew without fear of letting anything slip.

But this?

Fuck this.

Using Lance? Lance can almost forgive. Sure, from an outside perspective it may be despicable, but the mean little voice in the back of Lance's mind can almost cognitise it with all of the desperate trailing after Keith Lance has been doing over the years. The little voice can sometimes almost convince Lance that it's no worse than he deserves, that he brought this on himself.

But Hunk?

Hunk, whose mind puts whatever meagre intelligence Keith has to shame? Hunk, who has more compassion and goodness in one finger than Keith has in his entire body? Hunk, who is already a better man than Keith will ever be?

Hunk is worth so much more than this.

Lance is normally pretty good a composing himself. But his anger all but erupts out of him as he reaches out and snatches the letter from Keith's hands.

He makes short work of scrunching it up, ruining it in the same way Keith ruined him and then had the sheer gall to try and start on his best friend.

"Hunk is not your errand boy!" Lance all but shrieks at him, putting all of his strength behind pelting the ball of paper at Keith's face.

He knows in the back of his mind that it won't actually stop Keith, won't be more than a moment's deterrent, so he reaches out with his other hand and slams the door in Keith's smug, entitled face.

He feels a flash of pride swell through him at Keith's split-second look of shock before a solid wooden door calls end scene on their exchange.

It's so satisfying, and Lance quashes down any guilt before it can start to rise.

Keith knew what he was doing. He deserved everything he got.

Hunk puts a hand on Lance's shoulder, and pulls him into a hug when Lance leans against him.

"Thanks Hunk," Lance says, as he can feel his anger trickle out of him and tears rise up to take its place.

"Anytime buddy."

Lance doesn't finish this week's maths problem questions.

Instead he curls up in his bed and resolutely shuts his eyes. It takes his heart hours to slow down enough to allow sleep. To work through influx of anger that flares up whenever the event re-enters his mind. All the things he could have done differently, and all the hopes that he thought he'd rid himself of months ago, but are apparently made of sterner stuff than he realised.

But eventually he manages to calm his mind enough to fall into a fitful sleep.

* * *

Keith approaches Lance's desk before class the next morning.

There's a moment, just a split second where Lance has hope. Hope that Keith will have come to a realization last night and apologize. That they'll be able to go back to the way things were, to play fights over breakfast and competitions over simulation results. That they'll possibly be able to grow that into a real friendship. That perhaps one day Keith will give him a letter with his name on the cover.

But Lance's hopes are dashed, as always, when Keith pulls out an envelope and offers it to Lance. The name _Taylor_ stares up at him.

Lance's sleep-deprivation must fray his patience, because Lance can't be bothered to try to reign in his obvious, simmering anger.

Getting through his classes when he can barely keep his eyes open is already going to be difficult enough without any more nonsense. Keith already pre-emptively ruined his day last night. Isn't that enough for him?

"Seriously mullet? When is this going to end?" Lance honestly doesn't know how much more of this he can take.

Keith stares down at him for just a moment, hand clenching slightly around the letter. It doesn't escape Lance's notice.

"This is the last one, I promise." Keith says, his words pleasant but his tone ice cold.

Having to look up at Keith like this feels strange. Keith is taller when they stand side by side (another point in his favour), but when one of them is sitting down it's always Keith. Lance is the one leaning over his lunch table to start a conversation. Lance is always the instigator, because Lance is desperate for any attention Keith will give him and Keith barely knows Lance exists.

It's nice in a way to be the one sought out, but the malice under the surface of Keith's put-on pleasantness makes it clear that this is a one-time event.

Lance almost wants to shiver, but instead he meets Keith's gaze. He refuses to give up the moral highground here. Keith is being ridiculous taking out his relationship problems on Lance for no other reason than because he can. Because Iverson is at the front of the room and Keith is his favourite despite his discipline problems and Iverson hates Lance even though Lance is legitimately trying his best.

Lance can't make a scene, however justified, with paying the price with a detention. Any statement he makes will be immediately undermined by Iverson's rebuke.

So, because Lance has been disarmed of his righteous anger the only weapon he can reach for is feigned indifference.

"What do I care?" Lance asks, crossing his arms and mentally begging his voice not to waver. Not to crack, not to let on that a part of him still wants to beg Keith for forgiveness for his non-existent sins.

 _What do I have to do for you to keep looking at me?_ He longs to know. _What do I have to do to become Taylor?_

The answer is nothing.

Lance will never have Keith's affection, so he'll have to settle for some shred of dignity.

Keith presses the letter into Lance's desk and stalks off. It stares up at Lance with the same ferocity that Keith stared down at him.

Lance doesn't want to look at it. He doesn't want to think about it. If he can't magically change Keith's intentions to make the letter meant for him then he wants to be able to forget it ever existed.

Failing that, he'd at least like the satisfaction of ripping it up. But he can't do anything so rash in the middle of class, can't risk making a scene while he's firmly in Keith's territory.

He settles for the pettiness of picking up the letter between two pens, rather than with his fingers. Like it's contagious. Like touching it will taint him somehow.

He pretends that Keith would notice or care. But he'll never really have Keith's attention, let alone his affection. So in lieu of that he gives himself the satisfaction of ripping up the letter once classes are over and he's back in the safety of his room.

They don't talk anymore after that. Lance continues avoiding Keith, and Keith finally seems to get the message. There's no more notes in Lance's locker or slid under his door. He doesn't receive any more unexpected visitors to his room or desk.

Lance likes to think himself the instigator of this ceasefire. But the way that Keith's scores suddenly jump far out of Lance's reach, as if this whole time Keith was merely toying with him, makes him feel like he's the one being left behind.

Lance doesn't have Keith's affection or his attention or even the satisfaction of beating him.

But Lance has Hunk and family Zoom night. He has their attention and affection. He has pictures from his nieces and nephews on the backs of his brother's documents. He has his sister's mixtape.

And years later, when Keith gets kicked out, he has Keith's fighter pilot spot. And at least there's some satisfaction in that.

* * *

All Lance had wanted was one night out.

He's already done all of his readings for tomorrow. He's already done half of the physics problems for next week, even if in the back of his mind he thinks that he probably needs to re-work his generic solution for calculating variance in propulsion caused by fuel impurities.

The team's performance in the simulator had pointed to communication problems as at least one root cause of their failures. And a night out on the town was a sure fire way to fix that.

That, and to lift Lance's spirits a little after Iverson compared him to Keith _again_ , despite the fact that the mullet has been gone for months.

Shouldn’t Lance at least not be measuring up to his own standard at this point? Shouldn't they expect more from Lance, not 'Keith's replacement'?

Will he always be stuck trying to fill someone else's shoes?

It seems likely that he will. Perhaps that's just the price he pays for daring to follow in the footsteps of a 'prodigy'. Even if he devotes all his spare time to study and practice simulations. Even if he is near the top of some of his technical subjects, he'll never be enough.

Lance is probably destined to spend his life chasing after Keith. Or at least that seems the most likely scenario, given that their night out turns into a sci-fi disaster and before they can even think of a plan to rescue Shiro, Keith's already forced his way into the building.

"No, no no no no no, no you don't," Lance tells Keith, but also the universe, because he will not be pulled into its games, "I'm saving Shiro." He steps forward and pulls the arm that Keith isn't currently supporting around his shoulder to prove his point.

Then Keith… Keith, the boy who has consumed Lance's daydreams and fuelled his nightmares. Keith, who Lance has lain awake at night on more than one (two, twenty) occasion(s) wondering where he is and if he's okay - Keith who sent Lance love letters at the Garrison all addressed to someone else - that Keith - has the audacity, the sheer nerve to look at Lance and ask-

"Who are you?"

 _WHO AM I?!_ Lance wants to shriek _YOU DON'T KNOW WHO I AM?_

He wants to drop any pretence of calm and shake Keith. Or maybe punch him. A punch would definitely feel satisfying right now.

But if there's one thing that dealing with being Iverson's metaphorical punching bag day in day out has taught Lance it's patience.

"The name's Lance?" He says instead.

Keith's eyes widen minutely for a second and his jaw slacks. It's as if Keith is surprised to learn that Lance even has a name. That Lance is anything more than a convenient pawn to use when he's useful and toss aside after that.

 _I bet you would have remembered my name if it was Taylor_ , Lance thinks bitterly. He knows why Keith doesn't remember him, it's just a culmination of what Lance has always known about their relationship. But he refuses to let Keith off the hook for it.

Even though they're in a government facility, even though they're probably breaking innumerable laws, all of that falls away, leaving only the desperate need for Keith to finally see him.

"We were in the same class at the Garrison?"

"Oh really, are you an engineer?" Keith asks, half desperately.

"No, I'm a pilot," Lance jumps right back in, refusing to give Keith an inch, "we were like rivals you know: Lance and Keith, neck and neck?"

It feels foolish and childish to say out loud. But it's the truth. Or, at least, the truth of how Lance has always seen them. Equals, the makings of an unstoppable team, held apart only by others' misconceptions and inability to see the bigger picture.

"Oh wait I remember you-" Keith says and for a split second Lance's heart soars. It's not Keith's affection for Taylor. It's nothing more than a scrap of Keith's attention, but Lance will still jump on it. He'll still take it "- you're a cargo pilot."

Oh.

And there's the truth of the matter.

Lance, a second-rate pilot and nothing more than a messenger. Always a step behind.

Well, since he can't get Keith's affection, since he can't be Taylor, he'll take what small satisfaction he can get.

"Actually I'm fighter class now, thanks to you washing out," he says and takes the first step forward. So Keith will have to follow him for once.

"Congratulations," Keith half drawls, half spits at him. It has contempt seeped into its bones. It's the opposite of affection. But at least it gives him Keith's attention, which is better than nothing.

And some smug part of Lance can't help but notice that when they walk out with Shiro over their shoulders, they do so in step.


	2. Anno Lance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is his pre-death fantasy, and Lance will all but swoon if he wants to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you're worried from the summary: this story follows(ish) season 1 canon. It's just a line that I liked, don't worry about it.

Voltron is awe inspiring.

Voltron is larger than life.

Voltron is the universe's final and only hope. The destroyer of injustice, the bringer of peace. Voltron is the sword of karma, the single voice that declares here but no further: no more will tyranny be allowed to spread unchecked.

Voltron is Lance's destiny, one that feels much too big to possibly be meant for him, but one he will shoulder with all his strength nonetheless.

But since Voltron involves Keith, Lance is 50/50 on whether Voltron is even worth it.

If it were an option open to them, Lance would probably have packed up and headed home at least once by now.

Actually, scratch that, If they were anywhere near Earth Lance would 100% have dropped everything to at least go and see his family. To feel his mother's arms around him and simply bask in the presence of people who are thankful he exists. To become something more than simply insufficient for even a moment.

He probably would have returned afterwards, but he definitely would have left.

But they're not near Earth.

They're stranded in space, completely cut off from humanity apart from the humans aboard this ship. One of whom is Keith.

The sheer odds of this happening are probably proof that God exists and is out to get Lance specifically.

Because it's not enough that he's stuck on a spaceship with his high school crush. His high school crush who used him as a messenger and then tossed him aside when he was no longer useful. His high school crush who was too stubborn to let Lance get over him, so now those embarrassing one-sided feelings have been brought into the present tense, instead of left behind at the Garrison where they belong.

No, Lance is left on a spaceship with his crush who trains more than he sleeps, can't seem to take care of himself to save his life and literally forgot Lance existed.

And somehow, the burden of ensuring Keith doesn't work himself to death falls on Lance. Because no one else seems to notice, and Lance isn't going to let anyone be forgotten.

Space ohana still means family after all. Even if that unfortunately includes Keith.

Shiro has specifically sent people to get Keith a few times anyway, so Lance basically has that as a standing excuse.

As long as he doesn't linger too long watching Keith train. As long as he doesn't let his mind wander to alternate universes where Keith gives him smiles and holds his hand on the way to breakfast. Alternate universes where he means something to Keith, where he always has.

As long as he focuses on their rivalry, as long as he throws out jibes Keith's way and pretends he means them, Lance can at least maintain some semblance of composure.

And that'll have to be enough. At least until he can get back to Earth, back to his family and preferably as far away from Keith as possible.

* * *

Lance is probably dreaming.

The last thing he really remembers is protecting Coran's body with his own as a bomb exploded behind him. Just beyond that there's some feverish and addled hint of a battle, him in the perfect position for a shot and then a bullseye. Now his crush is sitting in front of him, holding his hand and looking over him in concern.

Him.

Not some other kid from back at the Garrison.

Not Taylor.

Lance.

Lance has to send a silent thanks to his mind. Obviously in favour of flashing his past before him, it's decided to create him a platter of an idealised future as a send-off to the next life. Any moment Lance is going to imagine returning to Earth, his family, and probably, since he's being real with himself, some sort of dream wedding to the boy next to him.

Lance squeezes Keith's hand, because if his mind has put in all the effort to make this scenario then he's going to make the most of it.

He half-considers letting all of his emotions out, all his hurt and love, safe in the knowledge that dream-Keith will surely respond in whatever way Lance wants.

But he's pretty sure this isn't the right time or place for it. There must be a future scene planned where Keith falls into his arms after some heroic action, and Lance doesn't want to break from the script his brain has worked so hard on.

No, instead Lance stays platonic, let's himself be in control for once.

"We did it," he says, and the words are hard to get out but so worth it for the way that Keith squeezes his hand in return, "we are a good team."

Keith's face breaks into a soft smile then, and he takes in Lance as if he just created the world. Lance lets himself forget about Taylor and the Garrison for just a moment, about what Keith's smiles really mean. He sits there and basks in Keith's attention the way that he always wants to let himself.

This is his pre-death fantasy, and Lance will all but swoon if he wants to.

He's not really sure how long they both sit there, revelling in each other's presence. Lance's head still feels a bit scrambled, and dreams don't really have linear timelines anyway.

"Keith - Hunk's back - we have to get Lance to a pod," Pidge's voice eventually calls, startling both of them.

Keith suddenly looks away, as if he'd just been caught staring. Lance lets himself keep watching him, so he sees the red start to invade Keith's cheeks, as if the situation and Lance are actually affecting him. As if they were the stars of a romantic comedy that just so happened to be set in space.

 _A+ brain_ , Lance thinks, _you're absolutely nailing this._

Keith coughs, and then looks back at Lance, his eyes immediately softening.

He starts moving forward, and Lance can already imagine the playful banter. Keith asking for his hand back so he can help him, Lance protesting that Keith doesn’t really need his hand for Lance to lean against him, and in either case Lance is pretty sure he can't walk anyway. _Guess you'll just have to carry me, mullet,_ Lance will say, his eyes twinkling, and Keith will grumble but do as Lance suggests.

And then his brain will call end scene, and they'll progress straight to some speech of Allura's about the ending of the war and their imminent return to Earth.

"Come on Lance let's get you to a pod," Keith says, softer than Lance has ever heard him.

Lance only grips tighter to Keith's hand in response. If Keith wants him to let go he'd better be prepared to grovel, and carry Lance to his destination in return.

But Keith doesn't ask for his hand back, and he doesn't try to haul Lance up. Instead he moves both their hands in some motion that's too complicated for Lance to keep up with, but which feels like if they were dancing would mean Lance should spin.

Lance feels a grin overtake him at the thought, and is brought back to reality by the lifting of his torso and knees by a force outside of his control, the rest of his body following limply along.

His left arm is lying across his body, to where he's somehow still holding hands with Keith as Keith's arm is under his upper-back, supporting him.

Lance isn't sure if such a thing would be physically possible in the real world, but he doesn't care.

"This is aces," Lance mumbles congratulations to his brain for giving him both the things he wants, "good work."

There's a small reverberation on Lance's left side, which he realises is Keith's chest as he chuckles.

"Glad to be of service," Keith says, in response to praise that wasn't directed at him, but Lance guesses he can share it nonetheless.

Lance is too tired to think of anything witty in response, already aware that the scene is starting to blur and fade out. So he just hums in agreement and curls himself a little closer to Keith's warmth.

Keith squeezes his hand and starts walking just a little faster.

As luck would have it, inside the pod Lance does dream of seeing his family again, of his mother's cooking, and of a wedding with a blue and red colour scheme taking place on Varadero beach.

It makes it disorienting for Lance as he stumbles out of a cryopod some undetermined amount of time later. He'd almost think that this was his own interpretation of the entrance to heaven, if all of the rest of the team weren't bent over some strange device, ignoring him.

Yep. That sounds about right for Lance's life.

Honestly, he'd rather go right back to his delirious imaginings where he has his family and the team think of him as something more than a nuisance and Keith thinks of him as something more than a messenger if it's all the same with everyone.

As he wanders closer he figures out something of what they're doing. Keith is standing a little closer to the cryopod than everyone else, and his eyes jump to Lance first as if he'd been half-distracted from the ticker in Pidge's hand even before Lance wandered over.

Lance doesn't know what to make of that, so he does what he does best and ignores it.

"Are we having some sort of a clock party?" He asks instead, his speech still a little slurred.

Suddenly Hunk's arms are around him, and Lance sinks into them with a sigh. Hunk has always been a grounding force in Lance's life, and he feels the dreams leave him and reality set in the longer he's held.

It's enough that by the time Hunk releases him he's remembered that Allura is the one he should be flirting with, not Keith.

"We had a bonding moment! I cradled you in my arms!" Keith declares, and Lance almost drops his spoon in shock.

He'd been so sure that any moment from the bomb's detonation to him waking up in the cryopod had been some sort of delirious near-death fantasy that Keith's words sound crazed. Even though his limited recollections of the fight with Sendak had fit Pidge's descriptions of what had happened, they had been easy to pass off as unimportant.

This, however, is not.

If Keith is to believed, then Lance held his hand and all but flirted with him, probably confessed fifteen ways to Sunday with his eyes and body-language alone. If what Keith is saying is true, then Keith smiled back at him, looked at Lance as if he was the sum and total of everything.

Lance isn't sure how much of his memory is real and how much is constructed. He's halfway tempted to press Keith further, to find out if in Keith's version contains a distinctive 'no homo' filter.

After all, if Keith is to be believed, if his tone is to be trusted, then there is the slightest slimmer of a chance that Keith might be able to see Lance for who he is, to see him as something more than a path to Taylor.

It's that thought that shuts Lance's hopes down.

He's been down this road before, after all. He's let himself get his hopes up about the letters, about Keith.

Lance had put his heart on the line for Keith, back at the Garrison. He'd written all of his feelings in a note, all his messy, jealous longing, and Keith had ignored it. Keith had decided that Lance was not someone worth his affection, and only deserving of his attention when he had a job for Lance to do. Lance had meant so little to Keith that he hadn't even remembered Lance as a messenger, as a face in the crowd.

It's clear from Voltron and the castle and the alien mice stealing bites of his food goo that Lance's life is a sci-fi.

It's not a romantic comedy.

"Nope," Lance says, already shaking his head at Keith because he's already tried and failed, and unlike Keith he can quit while he's behind, "don't remember, didn't happen."

Keith's mouth drops right back open in response, and Lance feels a cruel sense of justice overtake him as Pidge snorts.

_Not so nice to be on the other side of forgetting, is it Keith?_

The conversation moves on, but Keith's eyes remain fixed on Lance, through it all. He's acting like Lance forgetting this moment is somehow the straw that broke the camel's back of his composure.

It's almost laughable how weak his composure must be, given the exponentially greater amount of emotional hurt that Lance has been bearing with ease for literal years. Or maybe not ease, but at least far more elegantly than _this._

Lance tries to let it go. Over the following days he tries to be the bigger person, to give Keith the time and space he obviously needs to process, even though Keith never extended him the same curtesy back at the Garrison.

It's a small part vindictiveness that causes Lance to bring it up around Keith and a small part selfishness, because it's nice to see that in some small way Keith cares. But the vast majority of it is unstoppable curiosity.

Lance still doesn’t know if his recollection of the 'bonding moment' is correct - he doesn't actually know whether he lied when he said he'd forgotten. He hopes that eventually Keith will open up about it, will tell Lance what he so obviously wants to know.

But of course, being Keith, he never does. He just holes himself up in the training room more than ever, leaving the responsibility of making sure he actually eats and sleeps occasionally to Lance, given that no one else really seems to notice.

Lance bites back his bitterness and takes this burden on his back, just like he has all the others. He has no idea why Keith is so keen on working himself to an early grave, and some days Lance really just feels like letting him.

But Lance can admit that he never would. He does actually care about Keith, as little as the mullet deserves it.

And despite it all, when they actually work together they do make a good team.

* * *

Lance is taking a well-earned break in his room.

The team only got back from saving the Balmera yesterday, almost dying for the umpteenth time in a few short weeks, and come hell or high water Lance is going to relax.

He's going to put on some music, even if that 'music' is something that Coran helped him find which sounds a bit like screaming and a bit like an instruction manual and a bit like what Sylvio sounded like when he was learning the recorder.

He's going to make himself a face mask, even if the only thing on the ship that Lance knows for sure isn't toxic is the food goo, and he's going to kick back and not think about Voltron, not think about _Keith_ for a few hours.

Hear that brain? No Keith for a few hours.

Hear that universe? No Voltron-related emergencies until at least tomorrow, please and thank you.

And if Lance has to turn off the 'music' twenty minutes in, because it's causing an ache in the back of his skull that doesn't feel benign, that's not a big deal, singing is what he has vocal chords for.

And if the food goo seems to be some version of aquaphobic and flat out refuses to mix with the water to make a paste Lance can put on his face, then that's annoying but nothing relaxed Lance can’t handle.

And if the result of trying to make the food goo do something it does not want to do is mixing it a little too vigorously and spilling it all over his pyjamas then that's fine, he can just lie on his bed wearing his regular clothes in silence, alone with his thoughts. Nothing not relaxing about that.

And if there's a knock at Lance's door during his strict alone, relaxing time, then Lance can accept that, just as long as it's not Keith.

And if it is Keith - then Lance can…. honestly Lance can just forget about his relaxing evening, can't he?

But Lance can't quash down his shock and curiosity entirely. If there's one thing that Keith is it's punctual in his training schedule. Meaning that he's always training, not lowering himself to such activities like knocking on Lance's door during the middle of down time.

"Hey mullet, not training I see?"

There's something different about Keith too, something that Lance can't quite pin down. He'd almost say that it was like Keith was the one of them that had been enjoying a relaxing evening. The bags under Keith's eyes aren't any smaller than they were this morning, but it's almost like there's a lightness to him where there wasn't before.

Not to mention that Keith is actually smiling at Lance, which in Lance's experience is never a good sign.

"Not right now." Keith says. "I have something for you, actually."

Lance almost wants to step back, to pre-emptively shut the door in Keith's face. Because the last time Keith had something for Lance it was that last letter for Lance's involuntary delivery service, three years ago.

But he restrains himself, because Keith doesn't remember. Lance clings to that thought, and uses it to stay his hand and steady his breathing.

And then Keith hands him a letter written on thick, glossy paper, with jet black ink.

Lance stares at it for a long moment, his hands accepting it while his mind is momentarily offline.

Then he admits defeat.

Keith can have his win, if this is how he wants to play. Lance is sick of this game.

Three years ago he'd had held the first of Keith's letters in his hands, and marvelled at the notebook paper and blue ballpoint pen that comprised it. Any more extravagant materials, he had decided, would have felt like stepping out of reality, onto a movie-set or into a dream. Receiving such a letter from his high school crush would have been outside of the scope of his life.

It turns out he was right. But receiving this letter isn't like stepping into a movie, or a pleasant daydream. It's a nightmare.

He thought that they were past this. He'd blindly hoped that they were past this.

Keith not remembering him from the Garrison had hurt, had stung like an open wound, untreated and left to infection. But as much as it had brought to life all of Lance's worst fears: that he really had never meant anything to Keith, that he had been nothing more than a convenient messenger for the real object of Keith's affection, at least it had evened the playing field.

Keith had way too much power over Lance at the Garrison. At least this way they could build a new relationship as equals.

Keith had almost seemed happy to become friends, and Lance has found himself drawn towards him like a moth to a flame so many times. But he's never failed to pull himself back at the last minute, close enough to singe his wings but not to burn.

Keith would ruin him, the way he did all those years ago, if Lance let him get too close. Any sense of confidence Lance has built up during his time in space rests on that separation. On the fact that Keith doesn't remember, can't hold Lance's past over him.

Except apparently he does.

He remembers their old, sick joke. Now he's back at Lance's door to continue it, a farce of their old relationship even though the Garrison and Taylor are lightyears away.

"Really," Lance asks, trying for nonchalance and cursing himself when his voice cracks, "we're going back to _this_ now?"

Keith's lips pull up into a smile that looks genuine but that long ago Lance learned is a mask for cruelty. It's the smile Keith has had every time Lance talked to him at the Garrison, every time he handed Lance a new delivery.

He used to think it meant they were becoming friends. Then he discovered it actually meant that Keith thought he could be used.

Lance tries to hand back the letter, but Keith raises his palms in Lance's direction in some sort of 'stop' motion. Lance is half tempted to throw the letter away, or scrunch it up and throw it at Keith's face again, but instead he just stands there holding it like an idiot.

He can't help but give Keith the benefit of the doubt. He should know better by now.

"I think you might actually like this one," Keith says, his sick smile widening across his cheeks.

Lance feels his knees threaten to give out from under him.

He fights for the sake of the universe every day for this? He represses the hurt Keith has caused him for years, tries desperately to be at least a decent team mate, and _this_ is the thanks he gets?

He turns away from Keith, from that smug grin. He slumps down on his bed and wills his eyes to not water.

He knows he should tell Keith to leave, but maybe he's a glutton for punishment, because instead he plays right into Keith's lure.

"I never liked any of the others, what makes this one so different?"

Lance doesn't really give a quiznack about Keith's response, because he knows the answer is nothing.

He expects Keith to throw out a quip and leave laughing. He expects Keith's smile to widen. He expects something loud, pungent, another new hurt to add to the pile.

He doesn't expect Keith to cross the room with quiet steps and settle next to him on the edge of his bed.

He's closer to Lance than he's been since the bonding moment, and just for a second his smile drops to reveal a look that's so unsure.

"I…" Keith all but whispers, staring at the side of Lance's head, because Lance refuses to meet his gaze. Keith is probably about to pull the sickest burn Lance has ever suffered, but Lance doesn't even care.

He's so close.

"…I was hoping you might actually read it."

Lance almost drops the note. He fumbles with it for just a second and hopes that Keith didn't notice. He seems out-of-it enough that Lance is probably safe.

"What?" is out of Lance's mouth before Keith's words can fully sink in. He lets his eyes jump to Keith the way they've always been desperate to.

He has no idea what Keith's words could mean. Maybe this is an extension of the joke, maybe Keith decided it should go one step further.

But Keith's eyes almost seem to hold hope as he leans forward and cradles Lance's hands in his own.

That's the only word for it.

Cradles.

The same way Lance remembers Keith cradling him in his arms after the fight with Sendak. As if Lance was precious, as if Keith had ever thought he was worth something more than a messenger. As if Lance was the one who held Keith's affection. As if any of it meant anything.

"Please, Lance."

The last thing Lance wants to do is read the love letter Keith wrote to someone else.

But Keith asked it of him, so Lance knows he'll move heaven and Earth to make it happen.

The two sides of himself battle for dominance: his brain reminding himself that he's been down this road before, his heart quickening and filling him with lies that it tries to pass off as hope. He settles for moving slowly, examining Keith for any crack in his poker face as he goes.

He doesn't find any, and eventually the opened letter is in his hands. _Dear Taylor_ staring up at him from the top of the page.

That line alone is almost enough to make Lance abort mission, make him run out of the room and out of the ship and away from Voltron forever.

But Keith's hesitant smile steels his resolve. He takes a deep breath, and begins to read.

**_Dear Taylor,_ **

**_You wouldn't believe how much more perspective it gave things once I realised you never actually read any of the letters I gave you. I guess it makes sense, given that your name is Lance._ **

Lance's brain must have vaulted itself off into deep space for a moment there, because he doesn't really comprehend that paragraph until he's halfway through what looks to be…

**_The way fourteen year old you laughed made fifteen year old me gay. The fact that I am a gay disaster today is the result of your laugh. I hope you're happy._ **

A heartfelt ramble about Taylor's laugh - his laugh?

Wait. Hold up.

What?

He shoots his eyes back up to the top of the page and rereads the first paragraph, once twice, three times.

The sceptical part of Lance is congratulating Keith on taking the joke fifty steps further, on destroying Lance's psyche so absolutely that he'll probably never fully recover.

Lance's heart, on the other hand, is having the time of its life, beating a mile a minute and sending him lies that feel more and more in line with reality than Lance had ever thought they could.

_You're Taylor._

_Keith wrote those letters for you._

_You mean something to him. You always have._

His eyes race down to the bottom of the letter, his heart beating all the faster because he has to confirm that this isn't - the letter has a post script and that's where Keith would tell Lance it's all a joke and that he's never felt that way and never could and Lance will have to leave Voltron after this because the castle ship has finally started to feel like home but if Keith and his mullet really think Lance is going to sit around and take it when they pull this kind of-

But the post script doesn't destroy his hopes. All it does is over-fill his heart with fondness.

**_P.S. The poem wasn't even something you could brush off like a limerick. I googled_ ** **_sonnets_ ** **_for you Lance._ **

**_P.P.S. Not that I remember it, don't bother asking._ **

**_P.P.P.S. Shiro doesn't remember it either._ **

All it does is remind Lance about the sappy love poem Keith apparently wrote for him at fifteen. All it does is affirm every hope he has.

And when Lance sneaks a look at Keith's face, suddenly Keith's smile has context. Suddenly everything that Keith has said to him, every smile and scowl and hurt look have the context they desperately needed.

Because Lance never thought Keith made sense, he could never work him out. He'd assumed it was because they were too different, that there was a gap between them that was unsurpassable, as much as Lance had longed to bridge it.

Now he realises that all these years they've been standing side by side, staring across the same chasm thinking the land beyond it held the other.

"Quiznack," Lance says, because - everything. Everything is different now. He'll have to go back and redocument his life minute by minute, molecule by molecule, incorporating his knowledge and splitting his life into chunks - Before Taylor and Anno Lance.

And then, as if his brain is enthusiastically following his instructions, it pulls up a single memory - one once flooded with anger and hurt and a thirst for revenge. But now the emotions are sucked out of it suddenly, and Lance relives it as if from a vacuum.

His favourite pyjamas, slightly rumpled after curling up on his bed for family Zoom night. Hunk trying to unsuccessfully edge Keith out of their room before Lance's wrath could catch up with him. Keith clutching an envelope in one hand, a once unreadable look on his face that is suddenly starting to look a lot like hope.

 _"Will you make sure he reads it?"_ And then…

"I threw a love note you wrote me at your head."

His brain hasn't yet had time to recode the emotions for that memory, into the regret and shame Lance is one day sure he'll feel looking back, so his tone holds nothing but the shock he can't seem to dispel because somehow, someway Keith feels the same.

Keith looks at Lance for a brief moment, and Lance hasn't recovered enough to even hazard a guess at what his reaction will be. Surely it's as bad a memory for him as it was for Lance, surely-

Keith erupts into laughter.

He bends into himself, almost toppling right off the bed, but Lance throws out a hand to steady him at the last second. He stares at Keith for a long moment, unable to place even the broad strokes of what's happening, let alone enough minutia to understand the mechanisms of Keith's mind. But then a ball starts to grow in his chest, forcing its way out of his mouth as his own giggles form chuckles and grow into full on chortles until he's also lost himself completely.

What have they been doing?

Two hopelessly pining idiots, each thinking themselves the protagonist of some great tragedy. When really, they were both swept up in the waves of the same comedy of errors.

How did - how did this even - how does something like this _happen_?

"Keith," Lance tries to speak, because it suddenly hits him that Keith doesn't even have all the context for this joke.

Whatever the mullet is losing it over is only half the story, if that. Lance can make it so much better.

"Keith, you don't understand."

Lance heaves a deep breath and loses it halfway through to a choked continuation of their laughing fit. But Keith needs to hear the punchline. It's all he's thinking as he tries to reign himself in for just a moment.

"You don't- You don't understand. The boy I had a crush on… he gave me a love note - and I threw it at his head."

Keith meets his gaze, through it all, and Lance can see the overwhelming relief, right there in his eyes.

They don't say anything for a few minutes, regaining their breath and their composure. But then Keith smirks, and Lance ignores the way his heart flips. He already knows whatever Keith is about to say will not deserve it. C'mon heart, it's _Keith_ , can you stop being so embarrassing?

"Had?"

Keith elongates the single syllable to far more than its worth. And his half joke isn't really worth a reaction, but a soft chuckle is ripped straight out of Lance's chest, probably because it's just as over-fond of Keith as the rest of him.

"You ass." Lance says, and maybe happiness is a bad look on Lance, because if his fondness is going to show on his face as much as he knows it is right now then who will be left to keep Keith's ego in check? "I _have_ a crush on you, are you happy now?"

Lance is expecting a teasing response, proof that their back and forth was not merely a culmination of their animosity - that it had existed back before all this, back when they were friends, and would exist now that they were moving towards something more.

Instead, Keith makes the something more tangible, brushing his hand across Lance's cheek and answering with unfiltered sincerity.

"Yeah. I wrote you a love letter Lance. I wrote you ten love letters. Obviously I want you to like me back."

It's all too much. Keith is - how dare he, really. It's not fair that he gets to be heartfelt and downright romantic on top of everything else. It's just not fair.

Lance can't help the squeak he makes - a very manly squeak, mind you, one very becoming of a defender of the universe - and buries his head into Keith's shoulder to avoid the consequences of that.

That and merely because burrowing his face into Keith's shoulder is apparently something Lance is allowed to do now.

Lance feels Keith arms settle around him, rubbing gentle circles across his back.

It's like the calm after the storm, sitting in his room on an alien ship in his crush's arms. Lance takes long moments just to soak it all in, to let his senses capture the memory and lock it away somewhere it will never fade.

It's only because of the context that Lance finds the words.

"Just for the record," he says, thinking back to the letter, because in the coming days and weeks he wants to answer all of it, "fourteen year old me would have been completely gone with your laugh too, if he'd ever gotten to hear it."

A quiet chuckle falls from Keith's lips in response, and it calls to Lance like a siren's song. He leaves the safety of Keith's shoulder, suddenly desperate to see his face, and lets his hands begin to card through Keith's hair in almost a trance.

He's only been dreaming of doing this for what, three years? If fourteen-year-old Lance could see them now.

"Yeah," he continues, more in response to his own thoughts than anything else, "he definitely would have."

"Would have?" Keith asks, but this time it doesn't feel like a joke. This time it feels soft, like a candle lighting itself in Lance's heart, stubborn and warm and like nothing Lance thought he'd ever get from Keith.

It's enough to pull pure honesty from him.

"He definitely is."

Keith's lips pull up in what is probably an unconscious reaction, and Lance can't quash the desire to get closer. It's made all the sweeter by Keith meeting him halfway.

If someone had asked Lance, three years ago, heck five minutes ago, he would have guessed that Keith kisses like he flies. Fast and passionate and sure, sweeping the other party off their feet, daring them to try and keep up.

But the reality is so much sweeter. Because Keith doesn't kiss like he flies.

Keith kisses like he smiles.

Soft and slow and so ready to abort, to abandon mission and forget that he ever tried to connect in the first place. So unsure of himself, like he half thinks that every movement he makes could be the wrong one. Like any moment could end in tragedy.

So Lance moves at the pace Keith sets, tucking one hand into Keith's hair, feeling the strands between his fingers. He tries to demonstrate merely with his continued presence that Keith has nothing to worry about. That Lance has been waiting for this for years. That he's not going anywhere.

It takes a little time, but slowly Keith seems to accept that, tilting his head to find a better angle and all but sighing against Lance's lips. It's the sort of thing Lance could tease him for, but he won't because he doesn't want Keith to stop doing it.

Lance wants Keith to keep kissing him, he wants to keep revelling in this newness, this something more of their relationship. He wants to sink into the comfort of reciprocation, to let the warmth seep into his bones and clear out all the repressed anger and hurt he's spent years trying to not let himself feel.

But as they slowly part, still in each other's space, still breathing the same air, Lance realises that he wants to keep some of their back and forth too. At least the good bits anyway.

He still doesn't want their relationship to be vague, or meaningless clichés. Their relationship is still intrinsically tied to a years long rivalry, the victory of getting a chuckle out of Keith and the knowledge that when they put their differences aside they make a great team and that they're all but unstoppable.

Lance hadn't wanted to choose between those two options when he wrote his feelings out for Keith on Valentine's day, and he doesn't want to choose now either. He wants what they used to have, with all the toxins removed, as much as what they're moving towards.

His mind made up, Lance lets himself linger for just one moment more, before he opens his eyes and smiles at Keith.

"Keith, babe, I'll be right back I just need to do something real quick yeah?"

"Yeah, sure" Keith says, so open and full of trust, and Lance can't help but lean in once more, his lips brushing against Keith's before he leaves, ready to break the tension.

He manages to hold it together until the door shuts behind him, and then loudly and obviously starts calling Shiro's name, hoping Keith remembers the context of his letter's post script.

He hears Keith start fumbling after him from inside, and takes off, knowing his work is done.

He doesn't move too fast, not wanting to lose Keith entirely. But he also can't deny that he does hope he finds Shiro before Keith catches up with him.

If it's true, if Keith really wrote an embarrassing poem for him at fifteen, then perhaps Keith was always less out of his reach than Lance thought. Perhaps he really did mean more to Keith than he assumed. Perhaps they really could have always been destined for this.

* * *

So.

Lance may have gotten even more than he bargained for.

Because when Lance had found Shiro, Shiro had at first refused to tell Lance the embarrassing love poem Keith wrote him at fifteen, because non-existent 'Taylor's' rejection of Keith had apparently been so damaging to younger Keith's psyche that even knowing the poem would be too much of a low blow.

And just before Lance had been able to second guess whether this joke had actually been a good idea, Keith had caught up, grasped Lance's hand as if it was something they'd done a hundred times before, and re-iterated that Lance was Taylor, had always been Taylor, and had eventually even grumpily admitted that that fact meant that Lance should get to hear the poem.

It's in that context that Lance is sitting in a quiet room, Keith leaning up against his chest, as he recounts something he apparently wrote at fifteen.

Apparently, because even eighteen year old Keith has no place being that sincere. Let alone Keith from three years ago.

When it's over his brain can't come up with any reaction except "holy quiznack", because, what do you even say to something like that? How do you respond to fourteen stanzas which break down every doubt you've ever had about a person, which wipe away years of grief and hurt and pain with nothing but pure reciprocation and sentiment.

And how do you even begin to deal when the person who has just caused this revelation has the sheer audacity to ask "did you like it?"

Like there was ever a question.

Lance doesn't know what to say, so he pulls Keith in for a kiss, and tries to iterate everything he's ever felt through it. He wants nothing more than to make Keith feel as loved as the poem made Lance feel. He doesn't know how Keith could ever doubt himself. But Lance still wants to wash it all away.

"I was expecting," he eventually says, still only a hair's breadth away from Keith's lips, "some thesaurus-filled description of my eyes shining like a blue ocean sapphire made of blueberries and bluebells and blue crayons. Not actual sentiment."

Lance isn't really expecting an explanation, and honestly he doesn't really care. He's perfectly happy for Keith to pull him back in, that's a perfectly good alternative.

"Even fifteen year old me knew he could never do justice to your eyes," is what Keith eventually gives as an answer.

"How are you actually smooth?" Lance asks himself and the universe as much as he asks Keith. "That's not fair."

Keith just smiles at Lance, and takes his hands, turning them over in his own. It's a calming, repetitive motion, and Keith's hands are pleasantly warm. Lance lets Keith continue it without complaint.

Lance bringing up the letters and what he did to them should have ruined the mood. He's not sure what to expect, whether Keith will grow angry or sad or distant. He's expecting Keith to move away. He's half expecting whatever fragile hope he has to shatter, for Lance to realise that this is also just a dream.

But instead Keith stays. Instead he presses his lips to Lance's cheek and listens as Lance finally lets out all his messy, jealous longing.

"You were like, so much to me back then." Lance says, finally speaking the truth that's clawed at his chest for years. "And I never felt like I was anything to you. I was just that kid who annoyed you for a couple of minutes each day, and you couldn't even be bothered to tell me to go away - I didn't even register to you."

Keith reaches up a hand to cup Lance's cheek, and Lance thinks he could drown in this. If this is a dream, he doesn't want to wake up.

"You weren't," Keith whispers, and he's so close, sharing Lance's space the way Lance has always been desperate for him to, "you were the highlight of my day."

Lance turns and leans his forehead against Keith's.

It shouldn't hurt anymore. Lance knows that the notes were meant for him, that it was all just a misunderstanding. But the next sentences, the explanation are still hard to get out. Some part of Lance still can't quite seem to believe that they'll be met with anything but indifference. Indifference which, at this point, could very well break Lance's confidence beyond repair.

"I thought you wanted me to track down and give the notes to Taylor." Lance explains slowly, his heart settling as Keith reaches out to cup his cheek and listens patiently. "Like you thought it would be a romantic gesture to pass them on through another person.

"I thought you valued my time so little that you thought I should spend it doing errands for you. I was so, so jealous. And I didn't want to see you with anyone else. It was selfish…"

"It wasn't" Keith whispers like a promise, and Lance feels his eyes prickle as a pressure he'd long stopped noticing finally eases around his heart.

"If I was actually doing that to you - using you like that? That would have been despicable. I would have beat myself up for that."

Lance chuckles, because he can totally imagine it. Fifteen year old Keith approaching his current self with clenched fists, more interested in a brawl than in the sheer impossibility of them meeting. Even without this kind of provocation, Lance still imagines Keith as the kind of person to greet himself with a fight.

Like fighting is his native tongue, and everything else in his life was a second language he still struggles with, the same way that English is still sometimes too slippery for Lance to entirely wrap his mind around.

"I'm still sorry," Lance says, and he means it. If he could go back and change it, he would in a heartbeat. He might not stoop to trying to beat up his past self, but he definitely would have some disappointed words for the fourteen year old.

"Hey," Keith says, and pulls away to look Lance in the eye, "you have nothing to apologise for."

Lance tries to nod, because he knows that he should. He should be able to put this behind them, but his heart is still hitching from the emotional rollercoaster that this afternoon has been.

Keith doesn't say anything, but he stays, pressing kisses against Lance's cheeks and forehead and nose. He waits as Lance gets his breathing and his heart back under control, with a patience Lance didn't know he possessed.

They talk of happier things, after that. Valentine's day gifts and the future and everything that they're becoming. Lance pulls Keith close, and Keith easily follows, pulls Lance close in return.

At one point Lance leans back and realises he's let one question go unasked.

"So you know… the bonding moment…" He starts, and Keith frowns a little. But then Keith pauses, and his frown evens out. Lance hopes that he's realised he has nothing to worry about from it.

"What about it?" Keith asks, and he begins to fiddle with Lance's fingers again, like it's a nervous habit.

"I… might not have been the most upfront about some stuff…"

"So you do remember…" Keith frowns, and leans forward, deceptively close, to whisper into his ear, "Liar."

It's teasing, and when Keith looks at Lance he's smiling, but Lance still feels the need to defend his honour.

"I'm not a liar," Lance says, and bristles when Keith raises an eyebrow at him, "I just…"

It's embarrassing. Some part of Lance can't let himself let go of the embarrassment of having feelings, because they still feel like they should be painfully one-sided. But Lance sighs, and forces himself through the embarrassment. How many times has Keith tried to convey his feelings and failed? How many times has Lance even tried?

"I thought I was hallucinating." Lance admits, and Keith blinks at him.

"…What?"

"I thought I was dying, you know from the bomb? And instead of flashing my life before my eyes I was getting like a dream future, and so obviously you were… you know…"

Keith's face goes through about five different emotions, but slowly he leans his head onto Lance's shoulder. He is shaking, and Lance can hear muffled giggles coming from Keith's direction.

Not the dry chuckles Keith has let himself make before, not even the roaring laughter in Lance's room. This is so much softer, so much more human.

"When the next morning you talked about it, I wasn't sure if you meant that you cradled me in your arms in a 'no homo' kind of way you know?"

Keith's laughs grow louder, and Lance feels emboldened to continue.

"Just two bros being bros you know? Some platonic cradling? What's a bit of gazing into each other's eyes between friends, really?"

"You asshole," Keith mumbles into Lance's shoulder as Lance continues to tease him, but his laughter doesn't stop.

Lance smiles down at him, and finally asks.

"So, I really did stare at you like you hung the stars and told you we're are a good team like it's an immutable truth of the universe?"

Keith takes a few minutes to compose himself. Then he looks at Lance and grasps one of Lance's hands in his own. It's the same one he took after the fight with Sendak, but he doesn't have to bend down to get on Lance's level this time.

"We are a good team," Keith says, like he's fighting Lance's doubt. Like it really is an immutable truth of the universe.

Well, if the five of them actually were destined for Voltron, perhaps it is.

Lance doesn't dwell on that thought for long though. He has much more important things to focus on. Namely, making fun of Keith.

"That's my line. Does this mean I get to cradle you in my arms?"

Keith groans, and Lance wiggles his eyebrows in Keith's direction. He's considering how he can continue the teasing, how he can take it one step further, when Keith's gaze hardens.

He moves the joined hands in a familiar motion. If they were dancing it would have prompted Lance to spin.

 _I should ask Shiro if Keith can dance,_ Lance thinks to himself. It seems unlikely that he would have learned, but his movements in battle are fluid and graceful, so Lance reasons he could probably teach him.

Lance is brought out of his thoughts by Keith standing up in one deft motion, lifting Lance up with him. One of his arms is under Lance's knees, the other under his upper-back. Once again, they're still holding hands. Apparently it is physically possible.

Lance lets out a low whistle.

"This is aces," he says, directing his praise at Keith this time, "good work."

"Glad to be of service."

Keith begins to wander out of the room with slow, but unburdened steps. It's a pleasant rhythm under Lance, and he takes in his surroundings and the overwhelming feelings of safety and warmth the way he hadn't been able to last time.

"This is my new preferred method of transportation." Lance says, grinning up at Keith. "You can just carry me around everywhere now, right? Who needs legs when you have a Keith?"

"I'll drop you," Keith threatens.

Lance just moves shuffles in closer to Keith's warmth and makes a pleased hum.

"Nah, you won't."

Lance suddenly feels himself jolt, as the world seemingly falls out from under him. He almost lets out a yelp, but a split second later he settles, and he realises he's still securely in Keith's arms.

He looks up at Keith, who is grinning down at him.

"You didn't drop me," Lance says.

Keith looks like he's half tempted to, but settles for rolling his eyes and shifting Lance slightly.

"Nah," he says, "I never would have heard the end of it."

Who knew? Apparently Keith does have some semblance of sense.

"Too right you wouldn't," Lance smiles up at him.

Eventually, Lance shrugs and makes himself comfy again. He rubs his thumb across the knuckles of Keith's hand, and Keith squeezes it back, still walking them around the castle with no clear destination.

He'd almost be tempted to think that he'd managed to slip into another hallucination, another near-death fantasy. But he knows deep down that nothing his mind could concoct would have anything on this.

* * *

When Lance wakes the next morning, the memories come back to him slowly. The world tipping on its head. Keith going from a jerk who couldn't even be bothered to learn his messenger's name to a very-well meaning, if a little hopeless admirer.

Lance gives himself a few minutes to just grin up at his ceiling, before he gets up and gets dressed.

When he leaves his room he's already fully rid himself of any pretence of his first destination not being the training room to see Keith, but there's someone waiting for him.

"So," Hunk says, wiggling his eyebrows, "do you have a boyfriend now? Or do I actually have to make good on my promise to beat up Keith this time?"

Lance laughs, and throws his arms around Hunk.

"You figured it out?" He asks.

"Keith figured it out. I was just his sounding board while he did."

"Thank you," Lance whispers against Hunk's chest.

"Anytime buddy, you know that," Hunk says, squeezing Lance close for a moment before letting him go, "you'll let Keith know that it's breakfast time? I'll make sure Pidge doesn't eat all the pancakes before you get there."

Lance has no idea what is in the pancakes Hunk makes them on special occasions, but any Earth diner could serve them without their patrons batting an eye.

"Yeah, I'll go get him." Lance smiles. He has no reason to even bother trying to deny it now. "Thanks Hunk. You're the best."

Hunk pats him on the shoulder again.

"Don't mention it. Although if you want to mention it, I could use someone to cover my patrol shift tomorrow so I can call Shay."

Lance laughs.

"Consider it done." It sounds fun, honestly. Lance doesn't really mind patrol, and he thinks that he can probably wrangle Keith for some company.

Hunk waves at Lance over his shoulder as he wanders towards the kitchen, and Lance turns to walk the opposite direction with a lightness in his step and a smile on his face.

Lance's morning routine slowly becomes something more approaching normal when he hears the sounds of metal crashing against metal as he approaches the training room. Sure enough, when he enters he's greeted by the sight of Keith fighting a gladiator, although they're both moving slower than normal.

He leans against a wall, fully intending to let himself bask in just watching Keith in motion for a few minutes. But Keith turns to look at Lance before he gets the chance, which is also new.

"Hey Samurai, not trying for a new PB this morning?"

Keith doesn't grumble like he usually does, instead he dismisses the gladiator without argument and walks over to Lance.

"Nah, not really. I'd pretty much finished, I was just waiting for you."

Keith immediately gives Lance his full attention. He smiles at him and makes polite conversation. It's seemingly so mundane and yet somehow still so overwhelming.

"Well, here I am," Lance shuffles a little awkwardly. He felt so comfortable with everything yesterday, and it's not that he's unsure where they stand now. It's more like he's trying to figure himself out, how much he wants to change and how much he wants to stay the same.

He settles for holding out a hand as he asks, "Want to head to breakfast?"

Keith takes his hand and threads their fingers together.

"Sure, just one thing first."

Lance isn't entirely sure where Keith could be planning on going with their hands clasped together. But instead of moving away he just gets closer, until he's reaching up to press a chaste kiss to Lance's lips.

"Good morning," he says, still just a few inches away, smiling at Lance like he's something deserving attention, affection, praise and adoration.

Lance can feel the blood rush to his cheeks as he tries to will it not to. It's Keith. How is he allowed to just do things like that? It's not fair.

Lance can't keep the smile off his face though as he squeezes Keith's hand.

"Good morning yourself."

He wants to try a line on Keith. Something suave. Something that will prove he can keep up with anything Keith can throw at him. But everything that comes to mind is cheesy, so he sticks to something he'd say even if they weren't holding hands.

"So, I'm pretty sure we're doing blindfolded target practise in the lions today…."

"Yeah?" Keith asks, but Lance can already see the edges of his lips start to curl up.

Keith tugs his hand gently in the direction of the door, and Lance follows easily. There's no more need to be stubborn around Keith, now that he's already gotten everything he wants.

"Bet I can get more hits than you."

"And what'll you give me if I win?" Keith asks. Normally he'd rise to Lance's bait with frustration and general grumpiness, not a hint of flirtation in his tone.

"Mmmmm…" Lance pretends to think long and hard, even stroking his chin in thought. "I'll give you… a kiss."

Keith smiles. "Sounds good."

"And if I win I want two."

Keith pauses, and Lance turns back to look at him to see defiance in his eyes.

"Well that's not fair." Keith manages before his composure breaks and he laughs. They start walking again. "You're just trying to incentivise me to lose."

Lance still can't quite believe that a kiss from him is something Keith would consider an incentive.

"Fine, fine," Lance sighs, happily resigning himself to his fate, "if you win, you can have three, will that make you happy?"

"Yeah okay," Keith grins at him and Lance smiles back.

"And if I win I want four."

Keith scoffs, and starts moving faster as if to walk away in a huff. The effect is diminished somewhat by the fact that he only squeezes Lance's hand tighter.

But Lance still speeds up to catch up to him. So Keith speeds up to get away and Lance speeds up and soon enough they're both racing down the long corridors of the castle towards the kitchen, jostling each other but hand in hand and laughing with any breath that isn't devoted to the pursuit of speed.

Through it all, Lance looks over at Keith and Keith looks back with an overwhelming grin overtaking his face. Lance knows that his own expression must radiate a similarly ridiculous level of pure joy.

 _Hey past Lance?_ Lance thinks as he shifts slightly, so that they're in step with each other, spurring each other on but more of a team than a competition, two beings hewn from the same cloth, the same elemental rage.

_That rom com playing out in your locker?_

_It has a happy ending._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe it took me fourteen voltron fics to get around to writing the bonding moment? Shameful effort on my part, really.


End file.
